Tue 4 Dec 2007
Cover artist: Edward Gorey.
DELL. Paperback reprint: July 2001. Hardcover First Edition: Delacorte Press, July 2000. [The same artwork was used on both.] Published posthumously.
From the back cover:
above all, humor and perfection of language.
Sarah set out to write a classic English village crime story,
complete with vicar and mad virgin, and here it is,
together with Hilary Tamar and the brilliant, sexy, young lawyers
at the Chancery Bar.” — Amanda Cross.
Julia Larwood’s Aunt Regina needs help. She and two friends pooled their modest resources and invested in equities. Now the tax man demands his due, but they’ve already spent the money. How can they dig themselves out of the tax hole? Even more to the point: Can the sin of capital gains trigger corporeal loss?
That’s one for the sibyl, psychic counselor Isabella del Comino, who has offended Aunt Regina and her friends by moving into the rectory, plowed under a cherished garden, and establishing an aviary of ravens. When Isabella is found dead, all clues point to death by financial misadventure.
is smart and sweet.” — The New York Times Book Review
So Julia calls in an old friend and Oxford fellow, Professor Hilary Tamar, to follow a money trail that connects Aunt Regina and her friends to what appears to be capital fraud — and capital crime. The two women couldn’t have a better champion than the erudite Hilary, as once again Sarah Caudwell sweeps us into the scene of the crime, leaving us to ponder the greatest mystery of them all: Hilary, him — or her — self.